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Upcoming Workshop: Helping Clients Improve Their Sleep

Summary

Virginia Runko, PhD, CBSM, is conducting this workshop for beginners to CBT-I (Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia) in Laurel, Maryland on Friday, Nov 10, 2017. You can earn 6 Maryland and DC Social Work Category 1 CEUs .

Presenter Bio

Virginia Runko, PhD, CBSM is a licensed psychologist and certified behavioral sleep medicine (BSM) specialist. She completed her BSM fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She has worked on interdisciplinary sleep medicine teams at the Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep at Howard County General Hospital, the Pulmonary and Critical Care Associates of Baltimore, and the Miami VA. During her BSM fellowship at Johns Hopkins, she also practiced BSM at an outpatient mental health clinic and was the lead therapist for an NIH-funded clinical trial of CBT-I. She currently practices with a focus on CBT-I at The Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders in Washington, DC.

Workshop Description

Do you have clients who often complain of insomnia and other sleep troubles? Are you looking for concrete techniques to help your clients sleep better? This workshop will provide you with a foundation to understand and begin using a specialized form of CBT for Insomnia, called CBT-I for adults.

Insomnia has both negative medical and psychological consequences. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) has a plethora of research demonstrating its effectiveness, is recognized by the NIH Consensus and State-of-the-Science Statement as a first-line treatment for insomnia as it was found to be as effective as medication for brief treatment and likely more durable over time, and is recommended as standard, first-line treatment for insomnia per published clinical guidelines by the Chronic Insomnia Task Force of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Moreover, by treating insomnia with CBT-I, comorbid medical and psychological conditions are more likely to improve.

CBT-I is a tailored, short-term, non-medication approach to treating insomnia and consists of various strategies, including sleep restriction, stimulus control, sleep hygiene, and cognitive therapy. Each of these CBT-I strategies will be reviewed in detail so that attendees can incorporate these techniques into their practices. Of note, CBT-I can be used as a stand-alone treatment, in conjunction with sleep aids, or to help patients successfully taper off sleep aids, but the focus of this workshop will be executing CBT-I specifically. Various cases will be presented to illustrate for whom CBT-I is and is not appropriate, how CBT-I is executed, some of the common resistances to treatment, and strategies for overcoming these resistances.